Video

Writer
and educator Jonathan Kozol fought New York City traffic on a rainy
October day to address a packed Horace Mann Auditorium as the Virginia
and Leonard Marx Lecturer for 2002. After
brief remarks by President Arthur Levine about the history of the Marx
Lecture and the Marx professorships held by Professor Jeanne
Brooks-Gunn and Professor Sharon Lynn Kagan. Brooks-Gunn introduced
Kozol on behalf of both professors.

Calling
Kozol the "most eloquent spokesperson for America's disenfranchised,"
she credited him with having the "incomparable ability to take abstract
social problems and connect readers instantly" with those about whom he
writes.

"Without
the kind of work Jonathan does," she continued, "millions of people
would not know what the lives of poor children are like."

Kozol,
whose many publications depict his experiences of working with and
getting to know some of the country's poorest people through schools,
churches and homeless centers, greeted the audience by saying, "I feel
close to teachers, especially those who work with little children. They
do the best thing there is to do in life."

As
someone intimately familiar with the hardships associated with teaching
and learning in inner-city public schools, he noted emphatically,
"Every Washington politician who talks about the failures of our
inner-city teachers ought to be obliged to spend a day in an inner-city
school."

He
spoke of his early work as a teacher in Boston's segregated public
schools in the early 1960s, about which his award-winning book Death at an Early Age
was written. Since 1993, he has been working at schools in the South
Bronx. Children there have the highest rate in the western world of
chronic asthma. One-quarter of them have fathers in prison. In the
schools where Kozol works, he said he does not see one white child-a
phenomenon he calls "social apartheid."

Many
people, he said, have criticized him for only writing about what he
sees, and not referring to statistics. In his latest book, Ordinary Resurrections, he included the statistics with his personal experiences.

"Two
years ago," he said, "in elementary and middle schools in the South
Bronx neighborhood that I serve, there were 11,000 children-only 26
were white. That is a segregation rate of 99.8 percent." He added, "The
public schools of New York City, like schools everywhere in the U.S.,
are segregated and outrageously unequal."

He
added more statistics. When he wrote his last book, New York City was
spending $8,000 per pupil for students in the South Bronx. In the white
suburbs, schools get $12,000 per pupil, and in the wealthier areas,
school districts get $18,000 per pupil for public education. Teachers
in inner-city schools, he said, earn a median salary of about $40,000
less than the median salary of teachers in Scarsdale schools, who made
about $80,000 per year.

"People
agree with everything I say," Kozol continued. "They say, 'Yes, it is
unfair they don't get as much per pupil as our children.' Then they
say, 'Tell me one thing. Can you really solve this kind of problem by
throwing money at it?' And I say, 'You mean, can you really buy your
way to a better education? It seems to work for your children.'"

Kozol
spoke of current efforts of inner-city schools to have teachers justify
every moment in the classroom with a catalog number identifying what
educational task that project or lesson is meeting. "A lot of schools
are worried about playfulness," he noted, since it is not "on task."

"Some of the best things that ever happened to me were not on task," he said to an appreciative applause from the audience.

He
sometimes has the opportunity to bring celebrities into the classes he
works with. "Of all the grown-ups I brought with me, the one who meant
the most to the children and teachers was a man every one of you would
love to spend a whole day of your lives with-Mr. Rogers," he said.

Though
Kozol was afraid some of the children might not recognize Mr. Rogers,
one little boy went up to him and gave him a big hug, saying, "Welcome
to my neighborhood."

The
future that Kozol sees for the children he works with is less than
promising. "By the time these kids grow up, they will have compliant
voices and truncated aspirations. They will be market ready and still
not be fully human."

He
charged the educators in the audience to defend inner-city children
against market-driven madness and, instead, to uphold a nobler
tradition. He told them, in essence, "Be inventive, be subversive and
be bold." And, in doing so, he was not asking anyone to do anything he
has not already done himself.